SAN FRANCISCO — As You Sow, a nonprofit, focuses on corporate accountability and environmental health to implement eco-conscious programs and socially responsible practices. It's what the organization's CEO calls a "win-win-win" for companies, consumers, and the planet. (Photo: Matthewdikmans)
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By Jake Richardson
SAN FRANCISCO — As You Sow is a nonprofit organization that focuses on corporate accountability and environmental health. What follows is an interview with its chief executive officer, Andrew Behar.
How did As You Sow work with Best Buy to start in-store recycling of electronic waste, and do you follow up with the retailer to analyze the results of its efforts?
We started it as part of a much longer-term project. For about eight years we worked with HP, Dell, Apple, and other major electronics manufacturers. Dell turned it into a profit center by collecting enterprise scale electronics and extracting gold, copper, and other valuable metals from the boards of the old machines. Once all the major manufacturers were on board with take-back programs, we moved on to retailers—and as Best Buy is the largest, they were first.
We check in with them regularly. In 2009, Best Buy collected 1.5 million VCRs, TVs, and other electronic items. In 2010, it increased 20 percent to 2 million items weighing 85 million pounds. We see this as a win-win-win: for the company, the consumer, and the planet.
As You Sow worked with Pepsi and Coca-Cola to get them to add more recycled plastic to the plastic beverage bottles they sell to the public. How do you know the actual content of recycled plastic in their beverage containers increased, and are they still using recycled plastic? Will they increase the recycled plastic content even more?
Our program got Coke, Pepsi, and Nestle Waters to commit to recycle 50 percent of their plastic bottles by 2015. We also got them to increase the percentage of recycled plastic in their bottles. You need to have the waste collection infrastructure in place to do these things, and it is an ongoing relationship to encourage them to maintain their commitments. We are now working to get all consumer goods producers to take responsibility for their post-consumer packaging.
Home Depot is another very large corporation that As You Sow worked with. What was the main benefit resulting from your work with Home Depot? And is the company still in accordance with what it agreed to? Is there any monitoring in place to ensure Home Depot is in compliance with the stated goals?
They were selling old-growth lumber, and they were getting pressure from grassroots organizations like Rainforest Action and Sierra Club that was affecting their sales. We approached them to make the shift to farmed lumber, because only a small percentage of their sales was from lumber and consumers would not care. We said that economically it wasn”t worth the risk; you could eliminate the risk to your brand by stopping the old-growth sales.
We are a small organization, so compliance is something we are addressing. This year, we developed a database of our projects so that we could monitor them for compliance. This area is not fully funded, so it is something we intend to pursue with more intensity in the coming year. However, we do maintain relationships with the people and the companies we engage with, and we are placing more emphasis on continuity. On our Prop 65 [California’s landmark Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986] work, we go back and test the products sometimes and check the labeling.
Corporations are sometimes talked about as large, faceless bureaucracies. How does As You Sow initiate dialogue with them about policy change that could benefit society or the environment?
When we engage with a company, we see that, behind that image, every corporation has human beings running it. They often have a CSR (corporate social responsibility) person or investor-relations person that we meet with. They then escalate to CFO and CEO levels. Generally, CSR staff does not have a lot of power, but when there is an interaction with an outside group, they need to respond and so are elevated through this process. Shareholder engagement also means that the board of directors may get involved.
Recently, we see a trend in which the company comes back with the desire to cooperate and make real change. If not, the issue proceeds to a vote, and then we organize shareholders to put more pressure on management and the board. In 2010, we filed shareholder resolutions with Chevron and Exxon stating that there is risk associated with hydraulic fracturing and that the company needs to disclose the ingredients in fracking fluids. Forty-one percent of the shareholders of Chevron and 28 percent of those at Exxon—representing $200 billion in shares—agreed with us. Generally, a resolution gets under 10 percent [support] in its first year. This sends a very clear message to the management and the board that there is risk and they need to act.
When As You Sow works with companies, does it receive payment, or are its efforts backed by its own nonprofit fund-raising?
We have very strict policies on not taking money from corporations. We are fully funded by donations and foundation grants, with some money from legal settlements. We have issue areas, and we write grant proposals to get funds to execute a strategy. We start with research, often writing a report. For instance, when we focused on BPA, we worked with a coalition of NGOs [nongovernment organizations] and socially responsible investors to identify companies using BPA in the plastic lining of cans. We graded the companies A to F, published the report, and then focused on the ones that are failing. Risk is the key word to describe what companies face in not changing their policies when scientific facts show their actions to be dangerous to their customers and workers.
How did As You Sow get started, and what caused it to want to collaborate with corporations to make such policy changes?
It was founded by Tom Van Dyck, who was in socially responsible investing casino online starting in the early 1980s. It started from Proposition 65 work. We saw that corporate decision-making was involved in environmental degradation and wanted to use the power of responsible investing and shareholder advocacy to change that. We continue to show companies that steps they take to lessen their impact on the environment can actually benefit their brand and bottom line.
It’s about educating investors, especially large institutional investors like foundations and endowments. College endowments, for example, have almost half a trillion dollars in investments and yet many of them are not aligning those investments with their missions. The same holds true for foundations. One of our core jobs is helping these groups align their mission with investments. We have published the Proxy Preview every year since 2005 and distribute it for free, to assist people in making decisions on how to vote.
What are some of your current projects related to protecting the environment?
We”re very involved with fracking and coal. This year, we will file resolutions looking at financial risk to shareholders due to the impact of fracking on communities. So what happens when fracking comes to a small town? Fracking is heavy industry, and people may not realize it when they sign a lease for their mineral rights. Often, people discover that they do not even own their own mineral rights, and a drilling rig shows up uninvited 350 feet from their front door. Soon, their well water is tainted with toxic chemicals. Also, the fracking crews literally invade small towns, setting up “man-camps,” and soon, alcoholism, drugs, prostitution, traffic accidents are all on the rise. Coal is also huge, so we are working on issues with coal-fired utilities to transition to clean alternatives. Many older coal plants are out of compliance with environmental laws and need scrubbers and upgrades that are too costly to be amortized over the life of the plant. Many of these plants will need to be closed. So what are they going to do? Are they going to move to gas or to renewables, and what is the mix? We work with those coal-fired utilities to figure this out and make sure that they close down the coal plants and transition to efficient and clean alternatives. Most of this work is in coordination with Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. We are also helping students to press their endowment trustees on university campuses to clean out their portfolios that hold dirty energy stocks. We are continuing work on plastics and beverage containers, electronic recycling, and producer responsibility as well as BPA and a new area of nanomaterial in food.
What goals do you have for the future of your organization?
Of course the big goal is for all companies to be so responsible that we wouldn”t need to advocate for protecting the environment and human health anymore. But for the time being, we would like to see companies be more open to our issues and engage in active dialogue toward real change. We prefer this course so the situation doesn”t have to go to a shareholder vote. I believe the successful companies that will thrive into the future are the ones that are listening to and addressing these issues.
© 2011 SCGH, LLC.
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